Quote:
Originally Posted by lrt's friend
Obviously, you don't know what you are talking about. You don't need additional buses in the core if the people in the suburbs can't get there. The article was quite self explanatory. It very clearly indicates that they don't want to build the O-Train extension because they expect too many people to use it. This is very distressing that our planning is gotten so far behind that we aren't able to accomodate increased ridership that will naturally occur if we improve service to clearly underserved parts of the city. There are hundreds of new homes being built in Riverside South and Findlay Creek as I write this. A whole new area south of Earl Armstrong Road is being built. In Findlay Creek, a whole new section east of Bank Street is being built. If we don't address transit needs, we will have to spend a whole lot more than $75 million for road expansion. We already know, that a number of road expansion projects had to be advanced already because of our failure to build the N-S project. And this does not consider the Barrhaven side of the project where the population growth has been even higher.
Furthermore, I read some of the comments at city council at the last meeting concerning transit and falling ridership. It doesn't take a fool to understand that with employment moving away from downtown, and a stagnant transit system, you are going see ridership fall. There is absolutely no innovation taking place in advance of the opening of the Confederation Line, 5 years from now. If they really are interested in ridership growth, they need to better consider the needs of growth areas, and new employment patterns. Our current plans fail on these accounts miserably.
So, how can I express my alarm in seeing the 2031 date for even a modest extension? That was not the original TMP plan. Furthermore, the last I saw was that even the Bowesville leg was to be converted to a busway and the O-Train extension beyond Leitrim has also been abandoned.
I think city council is going to be in for a rude awakening when the success of the Confederation Line is not as explosive as the experts have claimed. After all, as the one person indicated in the article, if it takes 2 hours by transit and 20 minutes by car, the choice is obvious. This is exactly my personal experience.
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From what I understood most of the increase in ridershipp would be from extending to the Airport. Maybe I just misunderstood that bit. However as for serving the suburbs, that merely further promotes suburban growth. Ottawa has lots of land within the greenbelt that needs intensification (or even just simple development), and an improved urban transit system would probably do far more to imrpove transit use than expanding everything further and further into the suburbs. The price of serving the suburbs better than downtown is clear ticket price. It's $3 cash for an adult in Toronto, $3.40 in Ottawa, $2.55 in Hamilton, and $3 in Montreal (if I'm reading that right), of the three cities I've used transit at (Toronto, Hamilton, and Ottawa) Ottawa has the least reliable service and any bus downtown is frequently overcrowded. So Ottawa costs the most, for the worst service, and seems to have the greatest suburban focus already.